Vaya Con Dios

Six plus years ago, NBC aired "Vaya Con Dios", a Law & Order episode that featured a Chilean former general (and Chilean citizen) who is prosecuted by Jack McCoy of orchestrating a murder of an American citizen decades earlier (Season 10, season finale aired May 24, 2000). The episode itself is fairly typical of L&O episodes and Det. Lennie Briscoe gets in a few mild zingers.

The episode is notable for a few reasons. First, this was the last contract appearence of Steven Hill, who played the New York District Attorney, Adam Schiff. Second, the episode itself made little sense or congruity with respect to the law, federal, state or international. This is a bit unusual, because most episodes are written with a fairly benign understanding of the legal system. I say this with some amount of gratitude, because I figured out non-mutual collateral estoppel from an episode of L&O that aired a few hours after my law school Civil Procedure professor obfuscated the entire topic. Third and finally, and the reason why I am writing about this, is the oral argument that exec. ADA Jack McCoy gives before the United States Supreme Court.

The little speech that McCoy offers to the Supreme Court justices is startling in its intensity, in no small part due to Sam Waterston's passioned and powerful delivery. I saw the episode on syndication recently, and had it Tivo'ed so I could transcribe the words for later rumination. It is too bad that I can't find an audio file of the speech, so that I could add it here. Waterston's delivery of the words is masterful as well. If you ever get the chance to see this particular Season 10 finale episode, catch the last 10 minutes or so. It is worth watching.

Jack McCoy, to the Supreme Court:

"May it please the court.

Man has only the rights he can defend. Our most basic right is life. It's enshrined not only in our Constitution, but in the charter of the United Nations. The prohibition against taking a life is found in our most ancient texts and in the statutes of every nation. Every murder, whether in Brooklyn, Santiago, Rwanda or Kosovo, demands punishment by whatever legal means possible. Otherwise, the right to life is just an empty promise. "

(in response to a question from a justice) "On the contrary, Madam Justice, timidity in the pursuit of murderers is no virtue. The Founding Fathers affirmed life as an absolute right. If the laws protecting that right are to have any meaning, they must be given the broadest interpretation.

...The law against murder applies to all. No matter the perpetrator, the victim,or the country where the murder is committed. It is the one moral law that recognizes no national, racial or religious boundaries. It can tolerate no exceptions. There is one law. One law.

And when that law is broken, it is the duty of every officer of any court to rise up in defense of that law, and bring their full power and diligence to bear against the law breaker. Because, man has only those rights he can defend. Only those rights."

**

What strikes poignant is not that some guy is spouting idealistically about there being one law above all others, a law that covers everyone, but that some guy isn't spouting idealistically, but realistically. Let me repeat that in Jack McCoy form - the One Law that covers everyone isn't an idealistic paradise, it is what is real and true. Real and true. The law against murder isn't a common law doctrine or a codified statute, not really. It is something that all mankind instrinsically understands and, with a bit of reflection, we can find the source of that instrinsic knowledge or Truth.

Now, I am going far beyond the character of Jack McCoy at this point, the television character who is agnostic at best, but who cares. Sometimes, television or the movies can get it right. My guess is that CS Lewis would have listened to McCoy give his tear-inducing speech and then say something like, "the idea of One Law that transcends all of mankind, of Right and Wrong, where do you think that comes from, Mr. McCoy?"

It all fits together. The law, what is just, what is right, and God's truth. And we can recognize Truth when we hear it, because without fail it will strike a chord so deep within us that it will resonates in our souls.

All this from an L&O episode? Well, after several hundred episodes, they gotta get at least one thing right.

-David